This sentence was the starting point for my poster for Delusions & Errors. And as clichés make us understand messages faster, I chose to let the life jacket be my inspiration for the colours and shapes. My hope was for this poster to make people think from an immigrants perspective and feel empathy, cause new wives and new lives aint always what everybody wish for.

Delusions & Erros is an exhibition organised by Weltformat, Engy Aly and Mobius Design Studio, taking place in Dubai during Dubai Design Week.

Inspired by the manifesto of Richard Kostelanetz on Constructivist Fictions, this project was about telling a story in 3 different ways only by means of choice of paper, binding, color and cover materials.

Abstraction is used to turn fiction into form and form into narrative. Often in most projects content is done before designing. This project was about doing it the other way around and to let the form help create the content, which also resulted in 3 abstract typefaces.

The Ugly Duckling by H. C. Andersen is about unwrapping the surroundings as the time passes by. It's about unfolding every outside layer and revealing the inner self. It's about reflections and about finally seeing yourself.

This project was about sharing the same content through 4 different media (book, magazine, laptop, mobile) by developing a flexible typographic solution.

The chosen articles 'Supercommunity (Editorial)' and 'Arsenic Dreams' are from the digital archive of e-flux' Supercommunity.

While reading the heavy articles on the Supercommunity website, I often found myself scrolling without reading. I wanted this to be reflected in my typographic identity and came up with the idea of laying out the content in one single line.

Art book fairs are known for their variety of exhibitors, thousands of different materials printed on and every small thing working together to create something big.

This is a dynamic poster installation for Arnhem Art Book Fair, Stacks On Stacks. Every layer creates a new poster. Every poster results in a different combination of material, color and pattern. Although each poster is only visible until a new layer gets wheatpasted on top of it, every layer adds something to the whole.

A project that required thinking systematically and, next to designing a poster itself, thinking of an overall concept for the diversity of the posters.

Jorge Luis Borges is a writer, who lets the reader enter his own reality (or irreality). He is living in his own universe and this really shows in the way he describes every detail. He has so much to say about anything.

I liked the idea of having this huge universe inside a small object, which is why the book is pocket-sized.
With a white silkscreen printed planet on dark blue linen this universe is also reflected on the cover.

Collected Fictions contains 3 books:
A Universal History of Iniquity,
The Garden of Forking Paths and
Artificies.

“Having the same full name gives us a precious anonymity, a confusing one, which may bear an immense potential. We can use this confusion as a productive tool and create an anonymous Ahmed Basiony, of which no one can tell the difference.”

In this article Ahmet Öğüt asks his namesake to replace himself as a participant in the Ecumenopolis Biennale. Inspired by this idea, the two fonts Larish Alte and Larish Neue are chosen to make the dialogue between the two of them morph into one and create the same kind of confusion.

Larish Neue is a by-product of Larish Alte and it's created out of the DNA of the original.

This is an exhibition made out of portraits of 10 Danes and 10 Syrian refugees, all mixed together to highlight similarities and individual differences.

Every person has participated with inspiring stories and through those stories the exhibition aims to give a different and a more nuanced view on Syrian refugees in Denmark. It challenges the readers to meet each other face to face, get eye contact and to look beyond borders.

The labeling yellow words are used to provoke the viewer and make them stop up to read the stories, feel empathy and hopefully start a dialogue about bordering prejudices.

This project is made in collaboration with Ascent Association.

Posterslam—#3

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POSTERSLAM; Poster (A2); Think In Systems—Main Studio. (2015)

Posterslam—#3

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POSTERSLAM; Poster (A2); Think In Systems—Main Studio. (2015)

A poster I made for Posterslam #3, which is an event organized by students at The Basel School of Design. The event is about having free hands to design a poster out of one given sentence.

We love Istanbul.
We love the fact that when we walk
down a street, layers of history
unfold before us. We love listening to
the sound of the müezzins duelling
from their minarets and we love
seeing the sun set over the world’s
most beautiful skyline. We love the
restaurants and the tea gardens. But
most of all, we love the fact that in
Istanbul, an extraordinary cultural
experience lies around every corner.

Tüm Detaylariyla Istanbul (Details of Istanbul) is as the words describe – a book made by our fascination of Istanbul and all it's details. It's about what you don't see at first sight and to discover the city from a new perspective.

A big political poster about Europe’s refugee crisis.
In the future Europe is connecting people. Europe is where people share moments and lives. Europe is finger licking good. Europe is stronger than dirt.
And Europe – Das Auto.

This poster was selected by Jiri Oplatek and Viola Diehl as one of the 4 winners out of 100 posters made by fellow students at The Basel School of Design.

Europa also got shortlisted by GDFS.

CV—About

Hi, my name is Mahmud Sahan and I am a Graphic Designer currently working for Copenhagen based studio All the Way to Paris.
As a Graphic Designer, I have a passion for typography and printed matter. I like having a playful approach to my work and I really enjoy working in the fields of art and culture.